Some might call it a Guilty Pleasure but I was a fan of The Red Skelton Show — which was sometimes called The Red Skelton Hour during the seasons it was an hour. The series aired from 1951 to 1971, bouncing back and forth between NBC and CBS and between running a half-hour and an hour. It had mostly been a half-hour until the Fall of 1962 when CBS had an odd reason to double its length. Here is how I heard the story…
It involved the movie studio on La Brea Boulevard just south of Sunset in Hollywood. It's changed names and owners many times but folks still refer to it as "The Chaplin Studio" because it was built for and owned by Mr. Chaplin when it opened in 1917 and he owned it until 1953. Among the owners that followed him was — briefly — Red Skelton. Skelton purchased it in 1959 or 1960, reportedly for the sheer thrill of owning Charlie Chaplin's studio. But Skelton and those he engaged to run it didn't know what they were doing and he began losing money at a frightening rate.
By '62, he was desperate to find a buyer to take it off his hands and when it came time to sign his new contract with CBS, Skelton and his lawyers made a demand. In exchange for more seasons of Red's popular series, the network had to buy the old studio from him at a price that would restore Red's severely-injured bank account. There was much haggling and arguing but in the end, CBS decided they could justify the purchase price if the Skelton show went to an hour…so it did.
So here was his first hour show once they upped him to 60 minutes. It aired September 25, 1962 with his guests Harpo Marx and Mahalia Jackson. If you're a fan of Harpo, you may enjoy this because they gave him plenty to do including a very nice musical number. It was one of his last public performances and he died about two years after this episode aired. (You may also spot a young Dyan Cannon in the main sketch and at the end, there's a surprise appearance by Jack Benny, plugging his show which followed Red's.)
I'm going to post a few more of these over the next week or two and point out some things that I think are interesting about them. They have not aged well so I don't expect you to watch all of them but maybe take a peek here and there at this hour…